[6][7] Traversing the island in 1962, Hilger discovered an abandoned military hospital on the former United States Beane Air Force Base facility, near Vieux Fort which had been closed in 1947.

[1] The following year, Hilger took businessman Hogarth Belizaire to evaluate the military site and they approached Chief Minister John Compton with their plan.

The government agreed to the plan in 1965 and after several months of rehabilitating the property, which had been unused for twenty years, the hospital officially opened on September 5, 1966.

[5][6] She is remembered as the "Florence Nightingale of St. Lucia", for establishing the hospital,[1] which grew to serve 70,000 residents on the south side of the island.

[12] At the end of 2023 a project to reconstruct the hospital was approved by the Development Control Authority (DCA) and funding was reported to be confirmed.